no rust on a dino? that's rare!! must be one of the best around! I would have kept it as was.. but who am I.. this will be a showstopper when finished!
Out from the blasting booth and will be immediately primed with self etching primer. Next week it goes to the painter. The big pile of nuts, bolts etc go To L.A. tomorrow for clear cad, yellow cad and black zinc plating. Which means I either go to Tommy's tomorrow or Phillipis French dips! When someone says a nuts and bolts restoration, this is it. That plating represents every nut, washer, bolt and thingamajig excluding the engine parts as I usually do separately to not confuse me more than I already am. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Phillipes would be my choice. Btw would you care to share who you use for plating in LA? I am looking for a plater that can be trusted to address avoiding embrittlement concerns
What's your system for keeping everything straight? Do you separate the fasteners by TAV before plating, or does your parts/shop manual have fastener codes that tell you what type of fasteners go where? When I did my last rotisserie I was lucky because the car's parts manual had detailed fastener codes (encoding for example bolt length, diameter, plating type, all sorts of things).
And (probably) a dumb question...for parts that are 40yrs old, how do you determine what kind of plating is correct for a given part?
I use to lay things out and take pictures. Now I pretty muck know where everything goes so I just toss it all together. It's all in my head, no wonder I dream about Dino Parts!
Most of the plating is obvious, some things I like plated a certain way and so it's my decision whether I do Yellow cad or clear cad. To me the restoration is more of an art project, so on some parts it's a matter of aesthetics. Most items especially more prominent parts I do like they came from the factory.
It's now been 20 days since I picked up Jamie's car in Oakland, Ca. In that time I've completely stripped the car, mounted it to a rotisserie, had it blasted and primed, delivered all the chrome and stainless for either chroming or polishing, dissembled all the parts for either plating or powder coating, the interior trim pieces are already in progress and now daily i get boxes for rebuilding, restoring or replacing parts. That phase will start in earnest next week with suspension, brakes etc first on the list. Having a great time!!! Also I am sending off to the new owner one of the most important items you can have, THE DINO COMPENDIUM signed by the author himself. Time for Jamie to start thinking about a color as it gets delivered to the painter next week. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Pressing bushings out today and making new aluminum heat shields so I can get the last of the powdercoating done on the control arms. The body and pieces are now primed with metal etching primer and will be delivered back to me tomorrow. I had the fiberglass lightly media blasted. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
How much does a job like this cost? And do you have key man insurance? I'd hate to be the guy who had to figure out where each of those nuts and bolts went if you had a tragic gardening accident!! I ask the cost out of nothing but curiosity, so my son can inflation adjust it when he redoes the car in 2045.
With the car ready to be delivered to the painter tomorrow I can now turn my attention to start cleaning parts and restoring them. In the process of making a new heat shield I thought I stumbled upon another location for a body number. Not to be as I soon realized it was an odd number. It was sandwiched between the two pieces that make up the heat shield. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I always thought the "do not drop" advisory on those Smiths fan motor labels is a little unnecessary. I have visions of mechanics everywhere getting ready to hurl fan motors to the ground only to be brought up short by reading the warning.
Off to paint!. The car was delivered today to Speedzone in Santee, very close to my shop. Brad the owner does some fantastic show winning work. It was there at noon he called me at 3PM asking some questions and has already started working on it. A clean canvas to start on. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
The body work has already started. We did find a small area of rot on one of the sills. It was cut out and the area behind blasted and the metal replaced. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I love all aspects of restoring a Dino but for some reason I do not particularly like doing the vent windows. they can be a real P I T A! I usually put them off for last but this time I decided to get right on them, anyway that for sure now is the last items to get chromed. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Can you elaborate on what makes doing the vent windows such a PITA? Is it the disassembly or reassembly? My vent window surround rubbers are quite hard, making closing the vent windows very difficult (even w/o attempting to latch them closed...so I can watch the locks pop off for amusement..haha) and was considering replacing them. What's held me back is that those rubbers are very expensive (to the tune of $275 for each side) and the level of effort to replace them unknown.
